John C. Ford's Blog

If you want to write a thriller novel and are looking for a plot, consider this my gift to you:

In a move that seems inspired by "The Lord of the Rings," seven "keys" have been handed out to a trusted circle of people who might get called upon to "save" the Internet in the aftermath of a cyber attack.

But contrary to other news reports, the seven key holders have not been vested with the power to resurrect the entire Internet should it be sabotaged by hackers.

Rather, they have been given...

Mark your calendars, people: The Morgue and Me will be released in paperback on November 11, 2010.
I got confirmation of this through a nice surprise in the mail a while ago: a copy of Penguin's fall catalog. The paperback version of The Morgue and Me is being published by Speak, a Penguin imprint started in 2002 that has put out a ridiculous number of classic books -- The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin (which is sitting high on my to-be-read list right now), Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider...

By now you've already heard about I Write Like. It's the site that, using some kind of complicated algorithm, can analyze a selection of your writing and tell you which famous author you write like. I say you've already heard about the site because it has been visited 1,000,000 times by now.
Anyway, being as vain, naturally curious, and insecure as most writers, I had to check it out.
I asked the site to analyze some selections from my current work in progress, about which I am very...

You've probably already seen this, but the Old Spice guy recently decided to answer a question about libraries. Per usual, it's awesome:

I've been sitting on this for a while, but now that I'm blogging on the regular again it's time to announce the big news: French rights to The Morgue and Me have been sold!

Someday, somewhere, there will be a new version of The Morgue and Me (called Le Morgue Et Moi, if you can trust my French translation skills, which you shouldn't) with a new French cover and lots of French words inside. The publisher is La Martininere Jeunesse, and, well, I am absolutely thrilled.

And now I bid you adieu.

I came across a couple of fun YouTube reviews of The Morgue and Me lately. The first is from Liz V. of the Capital Area District Library, who has also done a video review of Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls. Here she is on The Morgue and Me:


And here's one that I really loved, from YouTuber "Snickerbug12," who -- full disclosure -- only rates The Morgue and Me a "2.5 or maybe a 3." But she won me over with her energy, and I love the sign off towards the end: "Read, read, read!"

The Morgue and Me has a Facebook page! I don't know how that happened, but it's pretty cool to see it up there. (I tried to add my website as the "official page" for The Morgue and Me, but Facebook denied me. It said it "did not recognize" that URL. Sigh -- no respect.)

Anyway, check it out here and "like" The Morgue and Me on Facebook.

Just got my ticket package to U-M football for this year. In honor of that:

Last night's episode of Bravo's new reality series "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" featured a nifty little challenge. The aspiring artists were asked to create cover art for one of six classic Penguin novels. And the challenge came with a very cool reward: the winning design (by contestant John, for his take on The Time Machine by H.G. Wells) is actually being put into production.
I missed the episode, but loving the art of book covers as I do, I was eager to scour the Internet for p...

This review just in from School Library Journal.  Gotta love that last line:
<!--StartFragment-->The summer before Christopher Newell is set to start college, he gets a job in the morgue because it's his life's goal to become a spy and working there should teach him about forensic pathology, if nothing else. Instead he discovers a murder cover-up that points to town officials and close friends. As he works to discover whodunit, the plot thickens with bribery, blackmail, murder, and revenge. With everyone suspect, a